Money And Myth Hurt Soccer In U.s.

PARK RIDGE — Slightly less than two years from now, the world`s greatest sporting event-soccer`s World Cup-will open in Chicago and spread to other cities in the U.S.

The month-long tournament will likely attract the largest worldwide audience in the history of television. The final game in Los Angeles will be viewed by four times as many people as will see the Super Bowl, and thousands of shops and businesses worldwide will be closed during its telecast.

But ironically, the nation with the fewest viewers will probably be the host-the United States-whose fans still have not discovered the appeal of the world`s favorite sport. It will remain thus until soccer in America overcomes the two greatest hurdles standing in its way: the money and the myth.

The big money in any American sport lies in its TV contracts, and soccer is a difficult sport to televise. While hockey, basketball and tennis are played on tiny courts easily covered by a few cameras, an 80-by-120-yard soccer field spans an acre or so, requiring several cameras and skilled operators for full coverage.

Soccer action never stops. There are no time-outs to break up the 45-minute halves, and the ball and players scramble endlessly and

unpredictably about the field. A goal might be scored at any moment. Even during a commercial.

If TV executives must dispatch armies of skilled camera crews and tons of expensive equipment, and if advertisers must wait 45 minutes for a break in the action to hawk their products in a commercial, they`ll go to another sport like baseball or football where the pace is slower and commercials are more frequent than the action.

The myth hovering over soccer is that Americans like action and that there`s too little scoring in soccer to suit the American taste. But like most myths, the facts indicate otherwise.

For example, this fall in the English Premier League (the equivalent of the NFL or NBA), viewers are being treated on average to a goal every 32.5 minutes. By comparison, a fan of professional baseball in America would have to see more than six runs in a 1/2-hour game to meet this average; a football fan would have to witness 39 points scored in an average game, counting the minutes of inactivity in the game.

A survey of the college scene reveals even more dramatic scoring action. What baseball fan would complain that a 6-to-5 college game was too low-scoring? Would a college football fan yawn at a 35-to-28 game? It would take such scores to match the goals-per-minute rate of college soccer games in the Midwest this October, which offer a goal every 19.9 minutes, on average.

And so, between the money and myth, soccer in America finds itself in a dilemma. TV will show soccer when more people are interested, because big money rides on ratings. But Americans will not be interested in soccer until they learn more about it on TV.

Still, it`s a problem worth solving by 1994, especially with statisticians telling us that, on average, every one of the world`s 5 billion people will see four of the World Cup games televised from America-a total of 20 billion viewers in a month`s time.